Sneak Previews!
by Midwinter Monday
Summary: Exactly what it sounds like — none of the half-dozen fics I'm working on is quite ready yet for posting, but for now here are teasers for a few of them!
1. Wayland Manor 1999

**A/N:** More promissory notes, I'm afraid — too many stories on the go, and I can't seem to get any one of them finished! But I thought at least I could post a sneak preview of three or four that are nearest to being done.

If there's one you're particularly keen to read, let me know. I'll try and focus on finishing whichever seems most popular — though I can't absolutely promise. The imagination is sadly willful (indeed counter-suggestible...). No titles as yet, but the dateline will serve to identify them.

As usual, everything in these extracts belongs to the incomparable Cassandra Clare, whose world, characters, story, language and imagery my stories entirely depend on.

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 _For starters, a teaser from my newest Jace and Valentine fic. I'll be posting extracts from more stories as soon as I can figure out suitable snippets..._

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Sneak Preview #1  
of a story by Midwinter Monday

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Wayland Manor, 1999

Caparisons were a pain. That was the opinion he, Jonathan Wayland, was rapidly coming to as he gripped his knees tighter around the thick cloth bunched below his saddle and galloped after his father down the wide, empty valley that lay beyond Mickle End.

Not that it wasn't kind of intriguing, riding the way people did back in the days of Jonathan Shadowhunter. But it was definitely _much_ harder, and he couldn't exactly see the point nowadays of tacking up your horse in protective gear. The days of chivalry were long gone, sadly — and it wasn't like you were going to fight demons on horseback. At least, he didn't anyone did.

Not that he was complaining, he amended silently — not if it got him this unplanned morning-off from his books. His father had always been strict about his studies, and ever since Jace had turned nine it seemed like he had become more grimly purposive than ever, as though some invisible deadline were hovering on the horizon and there was no time to waste.

But even Waylands took a half-holiday, occasionally. Or so his father had agreed, as he looked up at last from his breakfast plate this morning, a lurking smile visible, to Jace's relief, in his shrewd black gaze. It had been touch and go, Jace reflected, and there had been a moment when he thought he'd pushed his luck too far, and that the upshot of his urgent petition for an _educational_ excursion — as he hastily emphasized — to try out the ancient gear he'd unearthed while exploring the dustier reaches of the stable loft was going to be a dry reprimand and an extra hundred lines of _The Divine Comedy_ to translate.

But he knew his father pretty well. It was a heartbreakingly fine day to be cooped-up indoors, and he'd been fairly sure his father wouldn't be any sorrier than he was for an excuse for spending the morning exercising in the fresh air.

Jace gazed at his father cantering a pony's length ahead of him with the straight-backed, athletic grace of the natural horseman, and felt a stab of wistful admiration and envy. You would never guess, watching him, how slippery the layers of quilted cloth draped over the horse's flank were or how uncomfortably they wadded up under your legs. Not to mention how impossible the stiff canvas covering the reins made it to feel your pony's mouth properly.

With a sigh, Jace shifted his weight down and back in the saddle the way he'd been shown, trying to copy his father's effortless seat and ignoring the ferocious ache that had begun burning in his calf muscles. He was glad his father's critical eye wasn't on him.

But it was definitely getting easier with practice. By lunchtime, thought Jace with a burst of optimism, he'd probably have got the hang of it. Digging his heels into his pony's flank, he flung himself exuberantly after his father until he had pulled abreast of the great black stallion and they were galloping side by side through the tall, sun-gilded grass, horses' manes streaming like pennants in the sparkling air.

The arrows, when they came, seemed to arrive out of the bright, empty sky...

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 _ **** UPDATE: the first chapter of this fic is now up under the title of**_ **Lessons** _ ******_

More of this fic soon, I hope! In the meantime, if you haven't already, you might enjoy reading my other Jace and Valentine stories: **Fall 1997** , **Discipline** , **An Orchard So Young in the Bark** and **Chiaroscuro**.

And watch this space for previews of other fics I've got on the drawing board. —MM

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	2. Alicante 1985

_So this one is a new departure for me — and not what I meant to be writing at the moment! But I'm having too much fun with it. And I suppose, really, it's the beginning of, well, everything..._

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Sneak Preview #2  
of a story by Midwinter Monday

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Alicante 1985

The din in the dining hall at lunchtime was always appalling, but today seemed to be worse than usual: a clatter of china and voices that rose in deafening waves from the crowded tables and ricocheted off the panelled walls with the head-splitting force of a blow from a fencing epee landing ringingly on your unprotected helm.

Setting her lunch tray down with a grimace, Jocelyn slid into a chair across from her best friend. It was fractionally quieter here at the far end of the hall, one reason Maddy liked this little table in the alcove. That and the fact that other people rarely came to bother them in their little lair by the bay window. Maddy was deep in a book as usual, absently scooping up forkfuls of mashed potato and gravy by feel from her plate. At the sound of Jocelyn's arrival, she looked up, a smile of welcome in her grey eyes, before flipping the heavy leather bound volume shut with a little thud.

"You're late," she observed, but her tone was mild, her thoughts clearly elsewhere — Greywall's Abridged Compendium of Demon Toxins no doubt. Which was no bad thing, thought Jocelyn. The full searchlight force of Maddy's attention was the last thing she wanted at the moment.

"Summerhill wanted to see me after class," she said with a shrug, plucking the teabag out of her steaming cup and dropping it on her saucer. She took a small sip of the scalding liquid before adding casually, "So Luke asked me if I'd stop by his precious meeting this afternoon."

She took another sip, eyes on her hands wrapped round the cup. "I told him I might."

Her tone was studiedly nonchalant, but she might just as well have produced a crate marked High Explosives from her satchel and put it down with a flourish beside her lunch tray. Madeleine set down her fork with an clatter you could hear over the noise of the hall and sat back sharply in her chair.

"Oh my God Joss, don't tell me you've joined the fan club."

If Jocelyn hadn't been so annoyed, the look of horror on her best friend's face would have been funny.

"Oh _please_ , Maddy. I have _not_ joined the fan club." The words came out sharper than she intended, but it had been a bad morning, and she wasn't actually at all sure herself how she felt about going with Luke to his meeting — not that she was about to admit that to Maddy. "I'm only going because Luke asked me to specially."

"And you do everything Lucian asks, of course," Madeleine shot back. But it wasn't jealousy of Luke, Jocelyn thought in surprise: Madeleine was genuinely worrying that Luke might just be an excuse, that Jocelyn had a sneaking interest of her own in this stupid meeting.

She drew a hard-held breath. "I do if he really wants something, Maddy." Much as she adored Madeleine, Jocelyn couldn't help wishing that she didn't react so fiercely to everything. Maddy had uncompromising opinions on just about every subject — particularly this one.

"He's my best friend, Maddy," she added patiently. Abstracting her knife and fork from the crowded tray, she began sawing with difficulty at the lamb chop on her plate. School lunches had improved noticeably since their last chef got himself incinerated by an Erebus demon, but they still weren't exactly gourmet. "After you, I mean."

"Before me," Madeleine said promptly, but without rancour. "Everyone knows the two of you are practically like brother and sister." She shot Jocelyn a sidelong look from beneath her straight, dark lashes. "Though I don't think he'd mind if you were something more."

It was Jocelyn's turn to shove herself back from the table in annoyance, the heavy oak chair scraping loudly on the flagstones. "Oh for the love of the Angel, Maddy, it's not like that between me and Luke, I've only told you about a million times. We've known each other since we were kids, that's all." It amazed her sometimes how hard people found it to believe you could just be friends with a boy, even a boy you'd known your whole life.

"Anyway, I think I ought to go. If Luke's made a point of asking, it must really matter to him: I haven't exactly made a secret of my feelings about this precious clique of his. And honestly, Maddy, what's the big deal?" A note of tolerant humour crept into her voice. "We're getting a bit old for all this 'if it's your sandbox, I'm not touching the sand' stuff, don't you think? I'll go this once, and then Luke will stop bugging me about how I need to see what it's all about. I don't see how any harm can possibly come of that..."

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 _So we all know where this one is going... Hope to get more of it up soon, but in the meantime, if you want to jump a very long way ahead (!), you might enjoy my Valentine and Jocelyn fic **Odi et Amo** which takes place in the days immediately preceding City of Bones. Or try my post-City of Glass Jace-and-Clary fic **Permanent Marks**. For links to my **cycle of Jace and Valentine stories,** see my profile.  
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 _ **** UPDATE: the first chapter of this fic is now up under the title of**_ **The Circle Game** _******_


	3. Fairchild Manor 1987

_**A/N:** So here's a teaser from yet another new fic. The first chapter is almost done, but I got distracted by my school fic, The Circle Game. And I  really ought to be getting on with the next chapter of Odi et Amo! So I'm going with another sneak preview for now. So many stories, so little time..._

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Fairchild Manor, 1987

The studio was at the top of the house: a wide, airy room with tall dormers let into the slates at regular intervals that flooded the space with light. Long ago, before she was born, it had been a training room, but for decades now — ever since the injury which grounded her father for good — it had lain disused and empty, the ropes gently decaying on the walls, the varnished floorboards dulled by layers of grime. She and Luke played up there occasionally as children; she could remember the way their shouts echoed from the rafters, oddly loud in the silence, and the smeary tracks their feet left in the dust. Even at that age, she'd found something melancholy about the vast, derelict room.

Her mother had always had her own studio in of one of the handsome Georgian outbuildings ranged round the stableyard — she liked to say, with a twinkle in her grey eyes that took the sting from her words, that a little distance between an artist and her family was no bad thing. But Jocelyn couldn't imagine using her mother's studio for her own painting. Anyway, Valentine liked the idea of her painting in the house. He said it cleared his mind just knowing she was there under the same roof. "You're the cornerstone of all that I do, Jocelyn — my inspiration and my refuge," he told her again and again. "You know that."

As for getting away from family, that wasn't an issue, not yet anyway; though she supposed she might reconsider her mother's dictum, if and when — a little flutter of elation and apprehension brushed her nerves at the thought — she bore Valentine a child.

So the defunct training gear had been carted away, the windows cleaned, the walls revived with a fresh coat of paint; leaving her mistress of this ridiculously large and splendid studio.

"I'll have to be insanely good to justify a space, like this," she'd protested. "The next Lucian Freud." But Valentine only laughed, his eyes glowing with love and pride.

"You will be, Duchess. You are."

Which was of course preposterous, even making major allowances for the delusions of a newly-married man in love. Privately, Jocelyn sometimes wondered if she'd even manage fair-to-middling, with so many other calls on her time. Between their regular Shadowhunting duties and their work for the Circle, which was expanding in scope and seriousness by the day, it seemed sometimes like she barely got her hands on a paintbrush from one week to the next — not that her art mattered, not compared with the rest; they both knew that.

But today was that rare gift: a totally — miraculously — empty day. Freshly returned from a dangerous and satisfyingly tricky mission clearing up an outbreak of Oni demons beneath an East German stadium, they'd be at the bottom of the Clave's duty roster for some days. Valentine had ridden out early this morning to the Glass City for one of his eternal Council meetings: a plenary session on the proposed reorganization of the network of Shadowhunter Institutes 'to reflect changing mundane geopolitical realities'.

"Fiddling while Rome burns," he'd said bitterly. "As if the infernal worlds cared a toss whether the Third World is industrializing, or the Soviet bloc is in decline."

Or no, that was tomorrow's session, wasn't it? Today was the subcommittee to examine proposals for relaxing the wards that barred foreign Downworlders — those who weren't native-born — from entering Idris. "The Working Party for the Destruction of Idris," Valentine had called it with a flash of savage humour, adding that he'd probably be back late.

"Michael asked me to stop by on my way home." He spoke over his shoulder, already pulling on his riding gloves. "You know how keen he is for news of the Clave's latest follies." The light from the hall window glimmered on his aristocratic cheekbones, the wry curve of his mouth as it twisted in an apologetic half-smile.

His smile hardened. "Though how any idiocy the Council commits can come as news to him, Angel only knows. Our blind march to destruction under Whitelaw's so-called leadership is entirely predictable. But I promised I'd report back on the proceedings. Tell the kitchens they needn't keep supper for me. I'll get something to eat with Michael."

He'd kissed her, rather longer and more thoroughly than either of them had quite intended, and ridden away while the dew was still heavy on the grass.

So it was particularly frustrating that with an entire day lying sparkling before her like a sunlit reach of sea, her painting was going so infuriatingly badly...

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 _All in all, Jocelyn Morgenstern is finding newly-wedded life thoroughly agreeable. But when you're a Shadowhunter, you learn to expect the unexpected — especially if you're married to Valentine! The_ _arrival of two_ _ _ _unlooked-for___ _recruits to the Cause will upend more than her quiet day at the easel. The Circle itself may never be quite the same again...  
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I hope to start posting this story properly in the coming weeks. In the meantime, for more of the young Jocelyn and Valentine there's my school-era fic, **The Circle Game** — or fast-forwarding twenty tragic years ahead, you might enjoy **Odi et Amo,** my Valentine-and-Jocelyn fic set just before _City of Bones_. You'll find a different sort of glimpse of their relationship in the second chapter of my Jace and Valentine story **Discipline**. For more romance, you might try my Jace and Clary fic, **Permanent Marks**.

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 _ **** UPDATE: now posting this fic under the title of**_ ** _Wednesday's Children_** _ ******_


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